BBC Micro, the ancestor to ARM
67 comments
·August 17, 2025cperciva
skissane
> In many ways, the tuple (BBC Micro, Acorn Computers, arm) is analogous to (IBM PC, Intel, x86).
There was a radical difference in the relationship between the two corporations in each tuple. In the BBC-Acorn relationship, Acorn designed and manufactured the computer; BBC just offered their brand, did marketing, and supplied some high-level requirements. In the IBM-Intel relationship, IBM designed and manufactured the computer, and Intel was the CPU vendor, with many other customers. The 6502s used in the pre-ARM BBC systems were from MOS Technology–or one of their licensees, such as GTE/CMD–so those companies were really the Intel equivalent here
hnuser123456
GTE: General Telephone & Electronics
CMD: Commodore Micro-Devices
mark_undoio
Acorn was doing stuff in Cambridge UK until more recently than I'd realised - it effectively incubated a load of talent that went on to find other companies. Famously ARM span out of it but many others also went on to do cool things - my current company was founded by Acorn people.
zabzonk
> In many ways, the tuple (BBC Micro, Acorn Computers, arm) is analogous to (IBM PC, Intel, x86)
Except the BBC micro didn't use an ARM processor - it used a 6502. Whereas the IBM PC did use the Intel processor.
afandian
Depends how nitpicky you want to be. There was an ARM “BBC Micro”.
https://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/Acorn-BBC-Archi...
And the IBM PC used an 8088.
djmips
Let's be serious, the BBC micro is awesome but it's no more the ancestor to my phone than an Apple II.
Lio
Well the ARM's original goal was to run BBC BASIC faster than the BBC B could run assembly code.
To that end the ARM instruction set was heavily inspired by the 6502 in the Beeb and cruicially the BBC Micro was used to simulate the ARM before it went into production.
Latter the original ARM development kits were connected as second processors to Beebs courtesy of the Tube connector.
I think it's fare to say that without the BBC Micro there would be no ARM processors.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/a-history-of-arm-par...
rjsw
It is a bit closer link than that, the same people designed the BBC micro and ARM1.
jacquesm
Except, of course there was the Archimedes. Which was a BBC Micro on steroids.
Besides, it did say 'in many ways' so I think that this is really needless nitpicking.
talideon
Somewhat more than that. RISC OS was MOS on steroids too.
taylorius
The Archimedes was called a "BBC Micro" because it was part of the BBC's home computing initiative, but architecturally, it had nothing to do with the original BBC Micro.
Kim_Bruning
Sort of true, but yet, what does my eye spy on an early Archimedes A310 keyboard?
(detail: https://www.retro-kit.co.uk/user/custom/Acorn/32bit/A310/310... )
(full article for reference: https://www.retro-kit.co.uk/page.cfm/content/Acorn-BBC-Archi... )
... and besides, it runs BBC BASIC!
korginator
The BBC micro was revolutionary. Had a few of these in school in the 1980's. This was the first machine I came across where you could program inline assembly, out of the box. Got me started on adventures with the amazing 6502 family, assembly language, RISC, hardware and a ton of fun things.
linker3000
Well, I still own the ancestor - a BBC B.
As a schoolboy I was one of a handful who were in the computer club. We had a CBM (PET) 3016, a few Acorn System Ones and a UK101 that was built by our physics teacher.
One day this big grey prototyping keyboard case turned up. There was a microcassette unit fitted for loading and saving programs, and the whole thing was connected to a colour TV via an umbilical cord that looked like a vacuum cleaner hose.
We were given task sheets with projects to complete on this unit, and we could control the TV from the keyboard, read Teletext pages AND download programs.
It was a fun piece of kit that stayed with us for a couple of months.
In hindsight, I realised that the unit was a pre-production BBC Micro and we'd been part of a pre-launch test programme thanks to that same physics teacher.
jacquesm
Wow! I have heard about these but have never seen one. And I was pretty close to the fire at the time so amazing that you actually worked with one. I did get a pre-production Archimedes when it was still in development and had a great time porting stuff to it.
timthorn
At Netherhall?
grahar64
A BBC micro was my first computer. Americans had Amegas or something, but I had a BBC and a big book with example BASIC programs.
jameshart
The American equivalent of the BBC Micro was very much the Apple II. Both based on the 6502, both dominated the market of ‘first computers purchased en masse by schools’ in the 1980s in their respective countries.
I always get the impression though that while the UK and European home computer era continued from a diverse eight-bit era of C64s, Spectrums, Amstrads and BBCs to the sixteen-bit era of Amigas and Atari STs, before the PC became dominant, in the US the early eight-bit home machines gave way much earlier to consoles - the NES at first, then the SNES and Megadrive.
DrBazza
For whatever reason, Acorn dropped the ball.
At the time the Archimedes blew the nascent PC and every other machine out of the water, and yet couldn't get a toe-hold in the US market for reasons I've never quite understood. At the same point MS Windows looked shoddy at best in comparison to RiscOS.
jacquesm
Acorn didn't so much drop the ball as that the industry took off in a way that they simply could not have dealt with for the exact same reason that your EU start-up that is successful usually ends up being acquired: lack of access to easy capital. SV was well established by the time that the personal computer took off and even though they found their own nice niche (education) they never started out to conquer the world, they achieved their goals - and then some, see linked article - and managed to pivot fast enough and well enough to eventually give intel a run for their money, which is no mean achievement.
RiscOS wasn't even on the table for the likes of IBM and that is what it would have taken to succeed in the business market. But for many years the preferred machine to create Videotext or ATEX (automatic typesetting system) bitstreams was to have a BBC micro and there were quite a few other such interesting niches. I still know of a few BBCs running art installations that have been going non-stop for close to 45 years now. Power supplies are the biggest problem but there are people that specialize in repairing them, and there are various DIY resources as well (videos, articles).
forinti
The 80s were crazy. In 1981 Sinclair had a market with a 1KB machine and in 1985 the Amiga came out.
That's 4 years! The 386 came out in 1985 too.
I think Acorn did quite well and its legacy still lives on through ARM. Where's IBM in the desktop or CPU market?
zem
I had a BBC B as my first computer and would likely have enjoyed having an Archimedes greatly, but in retrospect "IBM compatible" was winning the day even then.
forinti
There's a very important distinction to be made between the Beeb and the Apple II (or most other 8 bit micros).
The Beeb was a very well engineered machine, including the BASIC (which allowed in-line assembly and also allowed its functions to be called from assembly, ie other programs).
pansa2
> in the US the early eight-bit home machines gave way much earlier to consoles
That’s my understanding as well. In the US the NES was huge in the late 80s, but in the UK home computers were dominant. The NES never sold well in the UK.
The 16-bit consoles did later on, though. So did the 8-bit Sega Master System, but not until the early 90s - it wasn’t a predecessor to the 16-bit machines, but a budget-friendly contemporary.
Lio
Yep, Acorn competitor to the Amiga and ST would was the Archimedes (followed by the A series and Risc PC).
The Archimedes was powered by a 32-bit ARM 2 and it was awesome. :D
jacquesm
The first time I started up an Archimedes and ran Lander it really felt like the future had arrived. The smoke particles in particular (heh) were very impressive.
sys_64738
The Archimedes was too expensive and not very well supported. The Amiga and ST wiped the floor with it.
sys_64738
The BBCs were niche products in Britain where they were mostly used in education. They were too expensive so parents bought Sinclair Spectrums and Commodore 64s. Even the cheap BBC Model B, the Electron, was a poor seller.
pavlov
The Amiga was much bigger in Europe/UK than the US, though.
The Apple II would be an example of the opposite.
UncleSlacky
Currency exchange rates in the early 80s meant that most US machines were much more expensive than their European equivalents.
pavlov
Commodore, the owner of Amiga, was an American company but they had factories in Europe.
DrBazza
Commodore Amiga and Atari ST were 16-bit 68000 chips.
The BBC Micro was 8 bit and a 6502 chip, that era had at least the following:
BBC Atom, Micro, Electron, Master
Commodore Pet, Vic32, Commodore 64
Atari 400/800 XL
Tandy TRS80
Oric Atmos
Sinclair ZX80, 81, Spectrum, QL
Amstrad CPC 464
Dragon 32/64
MSX machines
dcminter
The Sinclair QL was a 68k machine, not an 8-bit (and famously what Linus Torvalds had before he got a 386 based PC).
Edit: 8-bit data bus though, which I didn't know until reading up on the Motorola 68008 just now! Trust Uncle Clive to cheap-out as usual...
I cut my teeth on a ZX81 and even had a Spectrum +3 later on - that was the last gasp of the 8-bit Z80 Sinclair line, although the IP was owned by Amstrad by then.
zoeysmithe
The Amiga was more 2nd gen. I think the Micro equivalent was more like an Apple I/II. TRS-80/Tandy Color, or Vic-20/C64. The Amiga was Motorola 68000 based and at a clockspeed that really outran those zlog and 6502 based early devices.
The Amiga was a pretty impressive device with an OS that was fairly advanced. You could probably use it still today for word processing and sound design and not feel like you're missing much. The OS looks a lot like one of those super low-resource linux DE's.
drumhead
I remember seeing their first RISC machine, the Archimedes at a computer show. Everyone thought RISC was going to be the future of computing because it was just so fast. Eventually it was I guess but x86 delayed it for a while.
taylorius
I always loved Acorn computers. My schoolfriend and I released a commercial game on the Archimedes, and in 1994 I wrote a 3D demo suite for Acorn's new RiscPC machine (powered by ARM, of course). The good old days of hacking around!
klelatti
I can remember attending a meeting of the Cambridge University Computer Society (in 1985?) when a presenter from Acorn (Steve Furber?) talked about the new CPU they had developed.
I think the right adjective for the reaction of those present was 'incredulous'. A small team with no previous experience had created a powerful 32-bit design from scratch when 8-bit architectures were still commonly used.
Had anyone told us that 40 years later we'd all be carrying around the 'descendants' of that first Acorn RISC Machine in our pockets then we'd have been utterly astonished.
crinkly
Notably it was the first CPU they designed and the first silicon worked out of the box.
null
digitaltinfoil
I still think about how great Castle Quest for the BBC was. That game was killer
ThePowerOfFuet
I had one of these as a kid. Fond memories.
austinallegro
10 PRINT "COMMODORE 64 > *"
20 GOTO10
RUN
The article... well, it doesn't bury the lede, but it does completely omit it outside of the headline. For anyone who doesn't know the context: The BBC Micro was built by Acorn Computers, which proceeded to design the Acorn RISC Machine -- later renamed to Advanced RISC Machine and thence to simply "arm".
In many ways, the tuple (BBC Micro, Acorn Computers, arm) is analogous to (IBM PC, Intel, x86).